Australian Prime Minister John Howard gave the thumbs-up to Microsoft’s Bill Gates at Monday night’s World Economic Forum Dinner, promising a light-touch regulatory framework for information technology, and committing Australia to greater international competitiveness in the information economy. Gates, meanwhile, doled out flattering technological brownie points, all the while hammering home the theme (mantra?) of his visit – the digital nervous system, or DNS. (The DNS world is one where everyone has a PC, which is linked to everyone else’s PC via the World Wide Web, and is preferably running Microsoft’s gear.) It’s amazing the number of government projects going on in Australia involving what I call the ‘digital nervous system’ and the ‘web lifestyle,’ said Gates. In fact, of all the countries in the world that are looking to technology to create greater efficiencies in government operations, perhaps none is further along today than your nation. Earlier in the day, Gates had effortlessly fielded questions about the US Department of Justice imbroglio, and had deftly sidestepped questions about the local digital television spectrum debate. Nevertheless, he did manage to venture a few opinions: on the charge that Microsoft has a disproportionate share of IT revenue: Our shadow is much greater than our size; on NCs: That sort of went away; on speech recognition software capabilities: It’s eight to 10 years off as the primary way of communicating with a PC.
